My Swing (GolferDad)

[golferdad]

I've been Playing Golf for: 12 years

My current handicap index or average score is:  72

My typical ball flight is: inconsistent

The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is:  inconsistencies

This is video of my son who plays collegiate golf. He plays for a big D1 program so he is a pretty good golfer.    His short game and putting are phenomenal and I would say on the pga tour level.    However for a long time, he has struggled to be a good ball striker generally hitting 6 to 11 fairways and 6-10 greens in regulation.  This is the big reason his short game became good since he needed the short game.

It seems like nobody can figure out his ball striking issues and we have seen several golf professionals in the past.  For the past 2.5 years he has relied on the advice of the collegiate coach who in the past was rated highly as an instructor himself.   However after 2.5 years still no significant change.  The collegiate coach is focused on the team and all the players as he should be but this means my son may not get the amount of attention he needs to fix his issues.     He works so hard (4-5 hours a day) on his game and gets discouraged that its not getting better.  If he could ball strike like the other players, he would consistently be challenging for tournament titles, etc.

What should I do?

Should he be seeing improvement by now?

any advice from golf teaching professionals would be appreciated.

---

Videos:

[1player]

Tape him on 6 drivers

From taking the club out of the bag

To follow thru

Time it

Note any variances

Best swing I've seen in this section

It could be just giving him a solid preshoot routine that puts him 'in the zone'

He scrambles well why?

He hits a bad shot and has to 'think' about how to save a hole

He's so good, in mechanics, that he may just be a little 'unfocused' on full shots

While I'm not a teaching pro, since I don't want to take a huge pay cut, LOL

I have been taught by two pros in the PGA Hall of Fame

If his preshot routine is almost identical on good shots and bad shots

Maybe a little tweak at grip and setup, but that needs a good pro in the dirt with him before anyone can change that

Sweet swing, no wonder he's a collegiate player

So record 6 drivers, note which is good and bad

Then synch the preshot routine

Once he is more conscious of his preshot routine, he should get in 'in the zone' more consistently

6 GIR is terrible with his swing, 10 or 12 you can live with

6 fairways is also way under what he should be hitting with his positions

So nice to see a good solid swing here

Golf is a game of repetition, looks like he's put his time in the dirt to have a sweet swing

Now make him a machine from bag to follow thru

He needs 'blinders' like a race horse

All he sees once he grabs that stick from the bag is the same thing, exact repetition

Now he's focused like a machine

HIs swing isn't the problem

IMO

Focus

You can just stop watch his preshot routine

He takes the club from bag now time it to the follow thru

I my self am one of the fastest players I know

That's my routine

I sure as hell know how to hit a full shot

I take no practice swings

And you can set your second hand to my bag to follow thru

Not that I'm a 'great' player, but I've been on the plus side of a handicap for decades

[golferdad]

Best swing I've seen in this section  :  Thanks

It could be just giving him a solid preshoot routine that puts him 'in the zone':  He has a pretty consistent preshot routine.

He scrambles well why?  :   Had to do it so much all his life to get to this point.

Thanks for the kind words..

We recently had him working on tempo.  Hitting clubs with an 80 percent swing (hitting pw 130 when it normally goes 140,etc)

Also as part of the tempo work, working on smoothing out his transition at the top by shortening his swing a bit (ties into tempo as well).

He is a little across the line at the top and is working on pointing that down the target line using a laser drill tracing the target line.

His big problem is just not delivering the club face squarely on a consistent basis.

I am wondering if I should just let the collegiate golf coach continue working with him or get another instructor that can give him the right amount of time.  He probably gets looked at 30-45 minutes a week.

I am wondering if 2.5 years with the current coach should have resulted in improvements in his consistency.

[1player]

The final tweak in golf is about 6 inches

Between the ears

You either believe you are a player

Or you think you might be a player

When you say 'inconsistent', what is his miss tendancies

Does he miss left most of the time

Or does he miss right

Or is he all the over place

Me I am a hooker if I get fast, which is ok on most courses, since the left side of a fairway is usually parallel to another fairway and not OB

If I'm having a good driving day hitting lots of fairways

When I come up to a rare OB on the left side I don't even see it

Now if I had a million on the line, or I'm not hitting my normal high fairways

That OB looks HUGE

So no driver that hole today, punt a 3wood stinger down the right side or in the old days 1 Iron

All day long I could care less about left, I was and still am long off the tee, so if that crazy hook pops up, so what, I'm usually in short grass on the parallel hole

So course management is one thing you need to go low

Pre Shot routine is another

Iron glad setup and grip

At his level, he's showing you, when he has to think he can put the ball near the hole like a pro (his short game)

Well why isn't he puring every iron and driver?

Mental

If his swing isn't grooved to KNOW his miss tendencies and manage his game around his 'miss tendancy' that's course management he has to improve

And I'm telling you, if he is a zone player you will see him being timed close on bag to follow through on tee shots and approaches

If he's average of 16 seconds say bag to follow thru on good shots and 20 on bad, what's he doing, over thinking worrying

If he's 12 seconds on bad shots, he's not thinking enough and doesn't have a good routine

You're scratch he's a collegiate player, mental aspect of game is HUGE at that level

Then it's KNOWING you are a money player

Also, besides tendencies on a driver miss

He should have clear tendencies on irons

Is he usually on right or left side of hole on a miss, or is he long or short

If his irons are constantly long or short, okay, management, his yardages aren't dialed in or he's not got proper yardages

As you know, at a high level, there's a huge 'mental aspect' to golf

I was trying to tell you, give him a rock solid preshot routine to make him focus on everything but the shot and hole once he has selected the club, the shot shape and is now ready to do it

He knows the yardage and the shape and has his line, that's the last thing he needs to be be 'thinking' about over the ball, he needs to go into an automatic zone

Ok bag always on left side of ball, always 3 or 4 paces to ball, last look at line

Over ball do the setup

Pull the trigger

It's done

If he's X seconds good shots and bad, ok, tough to figure

If he's always 3 seconds more on a bad shot or 3 seconds fast

Easy to figure out

Over thinking and anxious

Not thinking enough

You dial in the preshot routine it's 'automatic golf'

Almost subconscious

Great example

Last night on GC Arnie talking about Snead

He played 36 holes in a tournament with him and 8 sudden death holes

He lost to Snead

He says to Snead after it

So Mr. Snead do you see anything in my swing I can work on now that we played 44 holes together

Sam's response

You know son I never saw your swing even once

It's called ZONE

That's the difference between PLAYERS and Rangers

Rangers can't find the Zone

PLAYERS live in it

[sean_miller]

Wow that's hard to read 1player dude (not even trying that second post) but it's not my "my swing" thread so whatevs..

The first video is blocked for me and the second doesn't play either.

[golferdad]

Thanks 1Player... I do appreciate your feedback.  To answer a couple of your questions..

His shot shape is currently a fade.   He sometimes switches this up to get a scenario where he knows which way the ball if falling (left or right).

His miss is normally a hook left.   Sometimes its a push.   He has an inside out swing and but its between 1-3 degrees.  His coach has him working on shallower swings with the driver so his angle of attack isnt so steep.

I personally think its more fundamental like tempo and the smoothness of the transition.

I guess my big question is should we have expected significant improvement in ball striking after working with the same instructor for 2.5 years? One think this instructor says frequently to us is that we tried to many instructors in the past.  However he has only had 2 primary instructors the past 6-7 years althougth we have tried seeing others occassionally. (ie, 1 times with that pro, 2 times with that one, 1 time with that one over the time frame).

[1player]

I can't really answer you on expectations as to time

All I know is my own experience

The kid that showed me the game, he was a great player that caddied for one of the top players in the 70's and 80's.

So he gave me my basics, I liked the game so I practiced some, but I loved playing

So I played mostly, never a range rat

So within 18 months I was close to scratch

I was plus within 3 years playing almost everyday

About a year after I started playing, a young mini tour pro took me under his wing and really improved my short game since I was a natural boomer

He became a president of the PGA and is now in the hall of fame

I always was just a player, loved to play, practiced some short game stuff, but once one swing was grooved, that was it, read some books by Hogan and Nicklaus but all that stuff seemed more confusing.

You grip it, set up, take it back and hit it, you want a fade you bring it outside and my natural shot was inside so a draw

I was natural in any sport I played, at 15 I played with a traveling legion team, had tryouts offered with several top MLB teams

Played at high level in baskeball

Tennis

The only sport I gave up on was football due to bad injuries

So a pro level player showed me the basics, I practiced enough until I could hit it ok, a couple of months then all I did was play

I got tweaked by an eventual hall of famer

Now I got good since I love to gamble and when you playing for big stakes

You either got the game or you go broke

I had game

I stopped playing for pretty much 17 years later in life, then after 50 I'm retired and got the time so I start playing

Throw 40lbs on your waist and try to swing like you did with a 31 inch waist

I couldn't plus most of flexibility was gone

Sure my short game was there, but how I used to play, that game was long gone, when you're 25 to 35 and can hit it well past 300 in the air with a driver and now you can only hit it 240 or so in the air, even though you are now on shorter tees, the game is way different

So my long past parallel driver swing was not barely 3/4, and my irons were still the same, since I always 3/4 them anyway

So my recent experience with a pro was this

I pick a guy who is in the SFL PGA HOF

Nice resume

Some tour players

One, is a young hot shot, was their early coach and they went to one of the guys recently you see all the time on Golf Shows

So I go to the pro

Look, I'm a player, played for years, I didn't play for almost 20 years, I got 40 extra lbs on me, so tell me how to adjust my swing to get 20 or 30 more yards on my driver at least

I relied on huge SS the result of a very long swing in my youth

So I never worked on perfect ball striking, my driver was built to do one thing, be 30 or so yards past most long players and be reasonably straight, no ob's but rough that close to a green so what, you could knock down a baby wedge still in the rough, rough isn't that bad of a penalty if you are close to a green on most courses, guess what, it's the same attitude Bubba has, be longer than anyone and hitting wedges from the rough

So the pro spots a couple of things in my swing FIRST LESSON

Sure enough, they helped me, I definitely would say I'm more consistent now, and I was consistent before

So a minor tweak in hands position and a minor take away tweak

BINGO

I'm more grooved than before

But what I went to him about more driver distance IT DID NOTHING FOR

So literally the next week the 2nd lesson I show him, thanks I love the two tips, but more consistent strike but no extra distance in driver

So he goes off on a tangent playing with this and that

It all feels wrong

So I go to the range and the first thing I asked him about in the first lesson that he said was 'good' I changed

To me I looked way to tilted in spine angle

So I go back to being upright in stance, and I try to recreate my old athletic swing

Very upright, huge wristcock at top

I'm starting to bang the end of long ranges again, not as long as 20 years ago, but long for a guy in his 50's

So my 3rd lesson I'm on the back tee area of the pros range

I fly 7 balls in row 280+ in the air into the woods behind his range

He looks at me and is telling me what a 'great player' I am

If he didn't see where I was the week before and how I made my own change and now I'm doing what I told him I thought I could do

So 2.5 years

That's not my experience with a pro

You get very good playing, you get fundamentals from a pro

Some people got a teaching pro stuck to their hips

That was rare 30 years ago

So I'm not qualified to answer that question

All I know is my own experiences

I got lucky

Had natural athletic ability from playing many sports

Confidence from being good in many sports

So some good  instruction from 3 people

First guy I played with, other than 30 mins on a range and picking his brain for a few rounds, that was his input

Then I played with the guy in the HOF a lot and he got tired of me hitting huge drives and good irons and as soon as I ran into trouble

I had no clue how to do anything but a standard chip which I didn't do well

He showed me fundamentals of a bunker shot, and chipping most important a killer LOB SHOT

So that was my experience with teaching pros

I guess you can say I'm a 'feel player'

Sure I know the basics and can spot major flaws in any swing pretty much except for a good swing

Most people don't have a 'good swing'

Show me a crappy swing and I'll give a tip that fixes their major flaw

BINGO they're cured kinda

To me a teaching pro is a doctor

Once you groove a swing

You go to him if you're sick

He looks at the swing

OK

You're doing this or that now

Me

If I hit a bad shot I knew what I did in my hands, I could tell instantly what I did wrong

If it became a pattern, I would got the range hit a small bucket

FIX IT

If your son was younger I would give you a great tip

How to teach him to score

But he's in college already so he won't do it

You lean to score by actually scoring on a course

You take a young golfer who is smacking the ball

You kinda embarrass them

You're hitting the snot out of the ball

Yet you can't break 80

Now I'm gonna punish you

I'm putting you on the ladies or seniors tees

When you can go back to back shooting in the 60's

You can move back a tee

After 5 tries if they fail, you put a skirt on them

JK

But you get the idea

Playing a short tee they're hitting nothing into greens or driving most par 4's and got driver wedge on par 5's

He goes low throws up a 65 or a 62

He overcame a ROAD BLOCK

Wow I'm good I CAN SCORE

So it was a pitch and putt course

He found a new confidence by playing the game where if he can't score from the ladies tees

You got major issues

In other words

Players are not created by teaching pros

Players have what it takes between their eyes to go to the next level

If you could buy a game by having teaching pros, every one would have game

PLAYERS are players

RANGERS are rangers

Let the kid play

Get a player to play with him

Show him why he isn't going low ON A COURSE

If he was 15 or 16 and just hitting it a mile

I'd say give him a skirt if he can't break 70 in 5 tries from the ladies tee

A kid shoots 65 even from the ladies tees

IN HIS MIND HE SHOT 65

A guy that ever shoots 65 KNOWS he is a player

So that's my experience

You're a scratch golfer and your son is a collegiate player with a pretty swing

You're asking how long for a pro coach to turn him into a machine

My personal experience is, a pro can only show you the fundamentals

Then you either become a player by wanting it and doing it

It's mental after a certain point

He has to believe in himself

He has to know he can stripe a ball

He has to know, guess what miss hits happen

I saw Jack once put 3 or so balls into the water at a tournament at a club I played out all the time in the early 80's

It was a practice round, 160 or so par 3, his 8 iron was like 1 foot from clearing the water 3 times in a row

How many times before you pure a club and it doesn't carry do you give up

It took Jack 3 shots

Then Cal Peete steps up and he pured a 5 iron probably one hop it hits the stick and goes in

From that day on I never hit a full iron in my life

I saw, a 3/4 knock down could beat the games greatest

Drive for position then knock it down to hit pins all day

Then roll in the birdies

That's my formula for going low

2.5 years, hmmm

Sounds like that's how they do it now, right

A coach always filling up your mind with 'swing thoughts', grinding over 3-5 putts on a practice green for hours, hours on a range

You learn to go low playing especially playing for something

He's got a short game, now he's grinding over perfection

Golf is a game of playing misses

You score on the great shots and learn how to score often on the misses

Other day I hit 13 greens, usually it's 10 to 12 for me

Sure I can often hit 15 and have hit 18

But 10 to 12 is usual

Well I hit 13 that day, you want to know why I went low

2 of my 5 chips holed out that day

The other 3 hit the pin or caught the lip all tap ins

I erases my bad shots with my short game and turned my misses in birdies twice

Made a couple of the short putts too that day on the GIR's

So a nice red number

So guys I know say what you do

They whistle striping it

I say no

I holed out two chips

Players can always PLAY and SCORE

And honestly no one taught me that

So I tried to give you some advice your sons got a pretty swing

My swing isn't 'pretty'

But I'm a player

Always was and always will be

You know what happens when you play in a pro am with tour pro and you fly him by 40 yards in the fairway

That used to be my experiences

Yo Par'd why aren't you out here

Cause I own a software company and don't want to take a huge pay cut

Now that pro could thump me all day

Tour level pro I am not

But I would keep up with mini tour guys

Plus 3 to Plus 4 best I ever got which was plenty good to win in my groups

Tour level pros are all Plus 6.5+

Let him play with some plus players a lot

When he starts to keep up

He's a player

He sees, ok, my driver is as far as these players

My irons are often as close

I got a better short game

Heck I AM A PLAYER TOO

You son starts to go low

He did it from within

Sounds like he's got enough 'game to go to the next level

But I honestly don't think a coach is the magic pill

Let him PLAY with some PLAYERS

He sees him game is good enough in many areas

He doesn't sweat every shot

I remember that hole when I out drove whoever

He's a great player

I remember that hole when I stiffed the pin better than whoever another player

I remember beating whoever on this hole or that

Start letting him play with the best you can find

Especially guys that played the tour at one time, even if they're older now

They look at his game

They tell you what they think

He's gonna be a great lawyer one day they may say

Or they say

He's close, he's just got to work on this or that

I played with a player a few times, he got tired of me blowing short game shots so he gave me an hour of his time

1 hour

Not 2.5 years

Let him play 18 holes with a few has beens

It could be the best investment you make

IMO

He gets visuals in his head of his shots against guys he heard about

I think my pivotal point was when pretty quick all the good players I knew let me play with them after going to the range for a while

My 3rd hole was a short par 4, I'm beginner never played on a course spent some time on a range with proper instruction

I drove the fringe

The players were like

WTF you bought a ringer to play and we're giving him strokes

And he's driving the par 4's

LOL

So I missed my eagle putt and tapped in birdie for a net deuce

I cleaned up that day on skins

Never got a stroke again in my life

And I played almost day for 15 years

Then I had to do some stuff

Now it's 20 years after the big break

And I still go low

Let some players size him up

Even if it's only 9 hole matches

They'll tell you what's wrong

And he might just find his game by PLAYING

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

Wow that's hard to read 1player dude (not even trying that second post) but it's not my "my swing" thread so whatevs..

The first video is blocked for me and the second doesn't play either.

Originally Posted by 1player

I can't really answer you on expectations as to time

(Ed: Roughly 1 million more lines of text)

And he might just find his game by PLAYING

Touche.

[golferdad]

1Player,   thanks again for your feedback.   I can tell you and I would get along well.

Im just a confused dad trying to help his son reach his dreams of playing on the tour....

I have to be honest... We have been with a couple top 100 instructors the past several years and just dont see the improvement.   I am wondering if these instructors really know how to determine the root cause or do they just see something and say do this.    I am also wondering if our approach is effective.  Maybe we are going about this the wrong way and perhaps I am full of chit. idk   I do know that my sons desire if off the charts and he works very hard at this.

btw  here is some additional video of him before going off to college (summer of 2010).

im now gonna go change my login to confusedgolferdad

[Beachcomber]

Originally Posted by golferdad

Best swing I've seen in this section  :  Thanks

It could be just giving him a solid preshoot routine that puts him 'in the zone':  He has a pretty consistent preshot routine.

He scrambles well why?  :   Had to do it so much all his life to get to this point.

Thanks for the kind words..

We recently had him working on tempo.  Hitting clubs with an 80 percent swing (hitting pw 130 when it normally goes 140,etc)

Also as part of the tempo work, working on smoothing out his transition at the top by shortening his swing a bit (ties into tempo as well).

He is a little across the line at the top and is working on pointing that down the target line using a laser drill tracing the target line.

His big problem is just not delivering the club face squarely on a consistent basis.

I am wondering if I should just let the collegiate golf coach continue working with him or get another instructor that can give him the right amount of time.  He probably gets looked at 30-45 minutes a week.

I am wondering if 2.5 years with the current coach should have resulted in improvements in his consistency.

I can see his stock shot is a fade just from the swing with the driver on the first video.  He looks like he takes it outside the start line - and then comes way inside on the downswing.

May I ask you where your son is located?  Are you looking for online video instruction, or hands on?  The reason I ask is that there are some excellent instructors that I've worked with on this site via Evolvr.  And they follow the 5 simple keys approach.  And just watching your sons swing, I can identify things I'd tweak - based on the instruction I've received based on Evolvr/5SK.

[Subaroo]

Originally Posted by golferdad

I guess my big question is should we have expected significant improvement in ball striking after working with the same instructor for 2.5 years?

You know the answer to this, and you are going to keep asking this until someone tells you what you want to hear.  Find a new coach, you obviously think that will help.